København

The last weekend in April I travelled to Copenhagen with the Swedish Fish for the three-day Wonderful Copenhagen Ultimate Tournament. Just like the Tallinn trip, Emilia and I headed to the tourney a day early to take in the sights. We hit up the castle, the mermaid, opera house, waterfront and the star-shaped barracks island. It was a lot of nice walking. I think it was a holiday, but the city seemed really empty compared to Stockholm. It was nice and open; old, yet designed. There were bikes everywhere!

Everyone wanted lots of pics with the mermaid.

I was more interested in this power plant,
which.I think was burning trash

I ate this delicious cookie sandwich, which i now realise must have been some sort of precursor to the poptart.

We didn't win a game at the tournament, but lost several by just a few points and had some really great moments. And some not-so-great ones, like when we were up on a team 10-6 when the time ran out. The way this tournament worked, when the time runs out, you finish the point and ad one to the highest score (unless one team has reached 15) and play to this score. We scored that point, so the game was to 12. We lost 11-12 and the match lasted all the way through our bye, almost two hours long; we had 15 minutes to rest and walk across the complex to our next game. We were only 10 players, so we were all pretty exhausted the rest of the weekend from this marathon game.

Here I am (looking awkward in 5 shorts) with teammates. Beautiful sky and weather on Days 2 & 3.
(Photo from Get Horizontal)

After that game, the team got pretty dysfunctional: not warming up together and having very little patience for mistakes. So dysfunctional that we didn't even get a photo in the official team photo photo-album on facebook (even though they took one).

It seemed to be a lot about pushing myself as a player. I was mostly handling. When a fellow handler asked me why I didn't throw the disc across the field (through the cup and into the wind) to her I was taken aback-- such a throw is way outside of my comfort zone, but the next point I started looking for these cross-field swings and they (mostly) worked out.

One (sort of) funny bit is that we were accidentally awarded the spirit prize. Em and I were the only Fish left at the fields after finals (the rest of the team preferred hanging out at the airport instead of watching ultimate) and they announced "Swedish, uh, Fish" as the women's spirit winners. We looked at each other confused, because our teams actions weren't particularly laudatory, but ran up to grab the prize excitedly. We started eating chocolate from the bucket they gave us and took some selfies with the sweet Viking trophy. We even started making plans for the trophy's role in the team: he would travel with us to all the tournies as a totem of sportsmanship. We got on the airport bus, ran into one of or pickup players and offered her some of our spirit chocolate. She told us that she had heard that the U23 Swedish national team had won. We felt horrible. Em ran back to the TD and asked them about it. Apparently the paper had been folded and they had only seen the Swedish part and just "guessed" it was us. We passed off the trophy and remaining chocolate to some of the youngin's on the bus. We will always have those precious few minutes with the Viking. All three of us even made it into the tournament video (near the end).

WCU - Wonderful Copenhagen Ultimate from Get Horizontal on Vimeo.

So photogenic! (and sunburnt!!!)

Tallinn, Estonia

I went to Tallinn for an Ultimate tournament called Kick in de Kök, which means "peak in the kitchen" in Swedish and is the name of one of the fortifications around the city, with the Swedish Fish, the women's team here in Stockholm. It was my first time going to eastern Europe for more than a few hours and also my first time captaining a team.

One of Tallinn's watchtowers, Tall Herman. The other is named Fat Margret. 

Tallinn old town skyline.

A friend from the squad and I went early Friday morning, so we could see some of Tallinn before the tourney. I didn't take many photos, but the old town was really cute and there is a fantastic pancake place called Kompressor that I would highly recommend (but only order one, they are really big). After a day of exploring, we met up with the rest of our team and a men's team from Stockholm called GRID for dinner followed by a medieval-ish tavern with delicious cinnamon beer and a sportspub to watch the end of one of Sweden's Euro qualifiers (they lost).

We went as a team that was there to have fun. As a club, there are mentalities of the Swedish Fish: the speedy, well oiled machine and the team that comes to have fun. There is a lot of overlap, but we brought a fun-oriented squad! This has a tendency to confuse our opponents. One remarked in the spirit circle, "We expected more from you." OUCH! We came in 7th out of 9th and had some hard fought games, but also some where we were trampled. It was a little disheartening, but we were a mix of fish teams past and present, 4 fishies, a fishie who had moved back to Germany, her twin sister and a girl who plays on another team in the Stockholm suburbs who has just come to cheer on their men's team, but we convinced to play since one of our handlers got sick and couldn't make the trip.

This haunted-looking liquor store was (luckily?) closed.

Our "intense it's defence-time" faces! and party winning leis!

We were the team that sang and danced on the sidelines (to a Swedish children's song about fish), the team that chanted really loudly, basically the team that I never in a million years would have thought I would have been part of. This was in stark contrast to the men's team from sthlm, who went to win (spoiler alert: they lost in the finals for like the fifth year in a row).

It was kind of weird, they kept stats for goals and assists. Apparently I threw 15 scores and caught one. I only remember throwing about 3.

We won the party with our sick dance moves and made up theme (there was none given, so we went with something approximately equivalent with "On a Boat" in preparation for our upcoming cruise). I still have the prize, a bottle of the local liquor (nobody really likes it).

We took a boat back from Tallinn (my first non-river cruise), which allowed for saunaing, more dancing, and an impressive stop at the duty free shop in preparation for our upcoming fundraiser party.

Sweden Semester I: A look back

Written in January, but just never posted! It's interesting to look at my expectations for this semester and how things are panning out. (pretty spot on)

Just a few weeks after arriving, I was invited to a teammate's summer cottage to close it down for the season. It was down a dirt road that was off another dirt road, which was off a gravel road neat Kopperberg. The cottage was powered off of a single solar PV panel and has a composting toilet. We went mushroom and lingonberry picking (very swedish activities), rowing on the lake and played lots of board games. It was a nice, relaxing introduction to the country outside of Stockholm.  

The crew rowing

Shortly afterwards, I went to Swedish mixed nationals with the Syndromes. They let me play in the less important pool play games. We ended up getting the Bronze (out of seven teams) and I think everyone was a little disappointed, but we'll get 'em next year!

Cool looking shroom (not for consumption

Then came lots and lots of school and The Royal Institue of Technology or Kungliga Tekniska högskolan (KTH pronounced Ko-tay-Ho) My courses were Renewable Energy Technology, Energy and Environment, Sustainable Power Generation and Sustainable Energy Utilization. That last one was particularly rough... dry early morning lectures on complicatedish material. I'm glad it's behind me... No more classes! Just a 30 page paper and a 20 minute presentation stands between me and my master's degree.


My friends Dani and Anders hosted an american thanksgiving for some of the north americans. Check out the sweet potatoes that I made (L) and my plate full of goodness (R). I took some photos of the people there, but we were all stuffing our faces and they didn't turn out very attractive

Right before exams, I went to Lapland with a few classmates to attempt to see the Northern Lights. We were successful! More photos can be found here. We also did some hiking in the snow and saw some reindeer. Since I would have been procrastinating and not studying for exams anyways, that seemed like a good way to spend the time.

Right now I am playing the indoor season with the women's team Swedish Fish. We went to København for Kung Volmer. After I got used to the necessity of throwing hammers, it was lots of fun, but super tiring (we had three handlers and the other two were sick, so I only rested about a point each game). We ended up 11th/14 had some close games, but are still figuring out team dynamics and lost our last match to some rude young girls, which was a little embarrassing. We have a big tournament in Göteborg/Gothenburg the weekend after I get back from Bangladesh, which I am really looking forward to, we are getting some player back who had taken off the first half of the season. 

That said, I'll be staying at KTH next semester for my thesis. I start the semester off (early) with a 3 week trip to Bangladesh to do a field study relating to identifying/developing good/effective/sustainable business models for rural electrification. I'm really excited about this opportunity and the flexibility that writing an academic thesis (rather than working for a company) should afford me. 

For the upcoming semester, I'm looking forward to getting to know Stockholm a little bit better, my dad visting for a soccer extravaganza, traveling to european tournaments with ultimate, and ya know... figuring out the next few steps in my life (maybe).